The Berean Table

Field	Detail
Pericope	Ephesians 1:1–6
Theme	Before the world began, the Father chose and predestined his people in Christ for holiness and adoption, to the praise of his glorious grace.

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Opening Prayer

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Closing Prayer

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Timeline Context

The book. Ephesians is one of the four “Prison Epistles,” written by Paul during his Roman imprisonment of roughly AD 60–62 (Acts 28:16, 30–31; Ephesians 3:1; 4:1; 6:20), in the early years of Nero’s reign. It was carried by Tychicus (Ephesians 6:21–22), apparently on the same journey that delivered Colossians and Philemon (Colossians 4:7–9). Paul identifies himself in the first line as “an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God” (v. 1), and the letter’s vocabulary, theology, and structure bear his stamp throughout. Ephesus was the leading city of the Roman province of Asia, a great port and commercial hub, seat of the proconsul, and home to the temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Paul had spent roughly three years there (Acts 19:1–41; 20:31), longer than in any other city, teaching daily in the hall of Tyrannus until “all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord” (Acts 19:10), and his tearful farewell to the Ephesian elders at Miletus (Acts 20:17–38) shows how deeply the church was bound to him. A textual note belongs here: the words “in Ephesus” (v. 1) are absent from the earliest witnesses (P46, the original hands of Sinaiticus and Vaticanus), and the letter lacks the personal greetings one expects from Paul to a church he knew so well. Many therefore regard Ephesians as a circular letter to the churches of Asia, of which Ephesus was the chief. This is a historical observation, not a doctrinal one; on either reading the letter comes from Paul to believers in the orbit of his Ephesian ministry.

The letter’s architecture is simple and deliberate. Chapters 1–3 set out what God has done (the indicative): blessing, election, redemption, resurrection from spiritual death, the making of one new humanity from Jew and Gentile, and the revelation of the mystery of Christ. Chapters 4–6 set out how the church must therefore walk (the imperative): in unity, holiness, love, light, wisdom, ordered households, and spiritual warfare. The hinge is Ephesians 4:1, “walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called.” Nothing in the second half is asked that the first half has not first given.

The chapter. Ephesians 1 contains three units. Verses 1–2 are the epistolary greeting. Verses 3–14 are a single sentence in Greek, a eulogy or berakah (“Blessed be the God…”), which praises the Father for every spiritual blessing in Christ and is structured by the threefold refrain “to the praise of his glorious grace” (v. 6), “to the praise of his glory” (Ephesians 1:12), and “to the praise of his glory” (Ephesians 1:14). The refrain marks three movements: the Father’s election, predestination, and adoption (vv. 3–6); redemption, forgiveness, and the revealed mystery in the Son (Ephesians 1:7–12); and the sealing of believers by the Spirit as the guarantee of their inheritance (Ephesians 1:13–14). Verses 15–23 then turn from praise to prayer, as Paul asks that his readers would know the hope, riches, and power of the God who raised Christ and seated him “in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority” (Ephesians 1:20–21), and gave him as head to the church. The chapter thus moves from blessing, to the content of the blessing, to prayer that the blessing would be grasped.

The pericope. Ephesians 1:1–6 is therefore the letter’s doorway and its first great movement. It comprises the greeting (vv. 1–2) and the opening section of the eulogy (vv. 3–6), which runs from “Blessed be the God” to the first refrain, “to the praise of his glorious grace.” Nothing precedes it; what follows it is the second movement of the same sentence (Ephesians 1:7–12), which moves from the Father’s eternal purpose to its accomplishment in the Son’s blood. The pericope thus functions as a foundation stone. Every major theme of the letter appears here in seed: “in Christ” (v. 1, v. 3, v. 4, v. 6), the will and purpose of God (v. 1, v. 5), grace (v. 2, v. 6), holiness (v. 4), the heavenly places (v. 3), the Father’s love (vv. 4–5), and the glory of God as the end of all things (v. 6). The exhortation to “be imitators of God, as beloved children” (Ephesians 5:1) and to be “holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:27) reach back to this paragraph; so does the prayer that believers would know “the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” (Ephesians 3:19). The pericope ends at a natural seam: the refrain of verse 6 closes the first strophe of the eulogy, and verse 7 begins a new movement with the relative clause “In him we have redemption.”

Historical and political setting. Rome under Nero (AD 54–68) was not yet persecuting Christians; Paul’s custody was house arrest with freedom to receive visitors and preach (Acts 28:30–31). Ephesus itself was a city of pilgrims, magicians, and merchants, whose economy was bound up with Artemis (Acts 19:23–41) and whose converts had burned their magic books publicly (Acts 19:18–20). To such people, many of them Gentiles who had once worshipped “the goddess” and feared the spiritual powers, Paul writes of a blessing secured “in the heavenly places” before the world began.

Redemptive-historical placement. The passage stands at the threshold of the new covenant age, looking back to eternity past (“before the foundation of the world,” v. 4) and forward to the praise of God’s glory in the consummation. Israel’s titles (saints, chosen, sons) now belong to Jew and Gentile together in Christ (Ephesians 2:11–22). The pericope announces that the salvation accomplished in Christ’s death and resurrection, and applied by the Spirit, was planned by the Father before time and will end in his praise.

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Historical-Grammatical Study

Genre. The book is a letter, but of a particular kind: less occasional than Galatians or 1 Corinthians, more a sustained theological and pastoral meditation on the church in Christ, with the marks of a circular letter noted above. The pericope itself contains two sub-genres. Verses 1–2 are a standard Greco-Roman epistolary prescript (sender, recipients, greeting), Christianized by Paul: “grace” (charis) replaces the conventional “greetings” (chairein), and “peace” (eirēnē) carries the Hebrew shalom. Verses 3–6 begin a berakah or eulogy, a Jewish liturgical form of blessing God for his deeds (Genesis 14:20; 1 Kings 8:15; Psalm 41:13; 72:18–19; 2 Corinthians 1:3; 1 Peter 1:3). Ephesians 1:3–14 is one sentence of 202 Greek words, piled high with participles, prepositional phrases, and relative clauses; it is praise before it is doctrine, and the doctrine is given in the form of praise.

Key terms and syntax.

• Apostolos Christou Iēsou dia thelēmatos theou (v. 1): “apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God.” The preposition dia marks God’s will as the means of Paul’s commission; the same root (thelēma) recurs in “the purpose of his will” (v. 5; Ephesians 1:9, 11).
• Hagiois … kai pistois en Christō Iēsou (v. 1): “saints … and faithful in Christ Jesus.” Hagioi is Israel’s covenant title (Exodus 19:6; Deuteronomy 7:6 LXX); pistois can mean “believing” or “faithful,” and probably carries both. One article governs both terms, so the “saints” and the “faithful” are the same people, and “in Christ Jesus” locates them.
• Charis … kai eirēnē apo theou patros hēmōn kai kyriou Iēsou Christou (v. 2): one preposition (apo) governs both Father and Son as a single source of grace and peace.
• Eulogētos … eulogēsas … eulogia (v. 3): the threefold “bless.” God is eulogētos (blessed, worthy of praise); he has blessed (eulogēsas, aorist participle, a completed act) us with every blessing (eulogia). Human blessing of God is praise; divine blessing of humans is benefit. The wordplay is untranslatable in English but is the engine of the verse.
• En pasē eulogia pneumatikē en tois epouraniois en Christō (v. 3): three prepositional phrases stacked together — every spiritual blessing, in the heavenly places, in Christ. Pneumatikē means blessing that belongs to and is mediated by the Holy Spirit. En tois epouraniois (“in the heavenly places”) is unique to Ephesians in the New Testament and appears five times (v. 3; Ephesians 1:20; 2:6; 3:10; 6:12): it is the unseen realm where Christ is enthroned, where believers are seated with him, where the church displays God’s wisdom to the powers, and where the battle is fought.
• Kathōs exelexato hēmas en autō pro katabolēs kosmou (v. 4): “even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world.” Kathōs grounds the blessing in election. Exelexato is aorist middle: he chose for himself, of his own initiative. Pro katabolēs kosmou places the choice before creation (John 17:24; 1 Peter 1:20).
• Einai hēmas hagious kai amōmous katenōpion autou (v. 4): the purpose of election, “that we should be holy and blameless before him.” Amōmos is the Septuagint’s word for a sacrificial animal without blemish (Leviticus 1:3; cf. Ephesians 5:27; 1 Peter 1:19).
• En agapē (end of v. 4 / start of v. 5): “in love.” The punctuation is disputed. Some attach it to what precedes (“holy and blameless before him in love”); the ESV, with most modern editions, attaches it to what follows: “In love he predestined us.”
• Proorisas hēmas eis huiothesian dia Iēsou Christou eis auton (v. 5): “having predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ.” Proorizō means to mark out a boundary beforehand (Romans 8:29–30; Acts 4:28). Huiothesia is the Greco-Roman legal term for adoption, which conferred full sonship, name, and inheritance (Romans 8:15, 23; 9:4; Galatians 4:5).
• Kata tēn eudokian tou thelēmatos autou (v. 5): “according to the purpose of his will,” literally “the good pleasure of his will.” The cause lies in God’s free delight, not in the creature (Matthew 11:26; Luke 12:32).
• Eis epainon doxēs tēs charitos autou (v. 6): “to the praise of his glorious grace,” the refrain that governs the whole eulogy (Ephesians 1:12, 14).
• Hēs echaritōsen hēmas en tō ēgapēmenō (v. 6): “with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.” Charitoō (“to grace, to bestow favor upon”) appears elsewhere in the New Testament only of Mary (Luke 1:28). Ho ēgapēmenos, “the Beloved,” is a messianic title (Isaiah 42:1; Matthew 3:17; 17:5; Colossians 1:13).

First-century Jewish background. The berakah was the staple of synagogue prayer; every devout Jew blessed God daily. Election was Israel’s birthright (Deuteronomy 7:6–8; Isaiah 41:8–9), and sonship was her privilege (Exodus 4:22; Hosea 11:1; Romans 9:4). The Qumran community likewise spoke of God’s choosing his own before the ages. Paul takes all of this and relocates it “in Christ,” applying Israel’s titles to a community of Jews and Gentiles in Asia. For Gentile readers in Ephesus, “the heavenly places” named the very realm their former religion had populated with Artemis, the fates, and the powers (Acts 19:19); Paul announces that in that realm Christ reigns and his people are blessed.

Covenantal themes. The passage breathes the covenant of grace. God’s choice of a people “for himself” echoes his choice of Abraham and Israel (Genesis 12:1–3; Deuteronomy 7:6); “holy and blameless” echoes the covenant demand “You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy” (Leviticus 19:2) and the unblemished sacrifice that secured covenant fellowship; adoption echoes the covenant formula “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son” (2 Samuel 7:14). Behind it all lies the eternal counsel between Father and Son (John 17:2, 24; 2 Timothy 1:9), which Reformed theology calls the covenant of redemption, and the Father’s choosing of his people “in him” shows Christ as the covenant head in whom every promise is secured (2 Corinthians 1:20).

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Expanded Outline

Section 1 — An Apostle by God’s Will to the Saints Who Are Faithful (Ephesians 1:1)

Key Insight

The letter opens with three identifications, each theologically loaded. First, the sender: “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God.” Apostolos means one sent with the authority of the sender; Paul is not a freelance religious teacher but Christ’s commissioned envoy, and the genitive “of Christ Jesus” marks both whose he is and by whom he is sent. The phrase “by the will of God” (dia thelēmatos theou) is Paul’s regular self-description (1 Corinthians 1:1; 2 Corinthians 1:1; Colossians 1:1; 2 Timothy 1:1), and it is no throwaway line. It insists that his office did not come “from men nor through man” (Galatians 1:1), and in this letter it sounds the first note of a theme that will dominate the eulogy: the will, purpose, and good pleasure of God (v. 5; Ephesians 1:9, 11). Before Paul says a word about God’s will for the Ephesians, he confesses that his own life is the product of it.

Second, the recipients: “the saints who are in Ephesus.” Hagioi, “holy ones,” is not a title for a spiritual elite. In the Old Testament it named Israel as the people God had set apart for himself (Exodus 19:6; Deuteronomy 7:6; Psalm 34:9), and Paul applies it to every believer without exception, including the quarrelsome Corinthians (1 Corinthians 1:2). A saint is someone God has claimed, not someone who has arrived. The textual question noted in the Timeline Context does not change the meaning: whether the letter was addressed first to Ephesus or circulated among the churches of Asia, its readers are addressed as God’s set-apart people. Calvin observes that Paul gives the name of saints to those he also calls faithful: “No man, therefore, is a believer who is not also a saint” (Calvin, Commentary on Ephesians, on 1:1). Holiness of life flows from the holiness of status that God confers in Christ.

Third, the recipients are “faithful in Christ Jesus.” Pistois can mean “believing” or “faithful,” and the ambiguity is probably deliberate: they are those who have trusted Christ and who go on trusting him. One Greek article governs both “saints” and “faithful,” so Paul is describing one group twice: the holy ones are the believing ones. The decisive words, however, are the last three: “in Christ Jesus.” This is the first of roughly a dozen “in Christ / in him / in the Beloved” phrases in the eulogy alone, and it is the letter’s master key. As Sinclair Ferguson has stressed, for Paul every blessing of salvation is ours only because we are united to the one in whom it resides. Saints are holy in Christ, faithful in Christ, blessed “in Christ” (v. 3), chosen “in him” (v. 4), graced “in the Beloved” (v. 6). The pericope’s Christological center is announced in its first sentence: identity is not located in Ephesus, in Paul, or in the believer’s performance, but in Jesus Christ, through whom an apostle is made and in whom a people is made holy (1 Corinthians 1:30; Colossians 1:2).

Application

Paul’s greeting reorders the way a Christian thinks about himself. Most of us, asked who we are, answer with our work, our failures, our family, or our feelings. Scripture answers first with God’s verdict: you are a saint, set apart for God in Christ. That is not flattery but fact, and living from it rather than toward it changes everything. The believer who knows he has been claimed by God can confess sin without despair and pursue holiness without anxiety, because his standing rests on Christ’s work and not his own (1 Corinthians 6:11; Hebrews 10:10, 14). Begin the day by telling yourself the truth Paul told the Ephesians.

The greeting also teaches how to receive this letter and all Scripture. Paul writes “by the will of God”; what follows is not religious opinion but apostolic word, to be received “not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God” (1 Thessalonians 2:13). A congregation that treats Ephesians as God’s address to it will read slowly, submit gladly, and expect to be changed. Finally, to be “faithful in Christ Jesus” is a calling as well as a description. Faith is not a one-time transaction but a daily reliance, and the Ephesian church, later warned that it had abandoned its first love (Revelation 2:4), reminds us that a sound start requires a faithful continuance. Ask where your trust has quietly migrated from Christ to something else, and bring it back.

A warning against misapplication: “saint” does not mean sinless, and it does not name a special class of super-Christians to be venerated; every believer in Christ is a saint, and no believer is yet perfect. Nor should “by the will of God” be borrowed by anyone who wishes to claim unaccountable authority; Paul’s apostleship was unique, attested by the risen Christ, and his words are tested by Scripture, not by self-assertion (Acts 17:11; 2 Corinthians 12:12).

Section 2 — Grace and Peace from the Father and the Son (Ephesians 1:2)

Key Insight

“Grace to you and peace” was Paul’s standard greeting, but standard does not mean empty. A Greek letter normally opened with chairein, “greetings” (Acts 15:23; James 1:1). Paul alters one word and transforms the convention: charis, grace, the free and undeserved favor of God toward the ill-deserving, which will be the keyword of this letter (Ephesians 2:5, 7–8; 3:2, 7–8; 4:7). To it he adds the Jewish greeting shalom, rendered eirēnē, peace, which is not mere calm but the wholeness and well-being that come when God’s wrath is removed and his favor rests on a person (Numbers 6:24–26; Isaiah 53:5). The order is significant and never reversed in Paul: grace first, peace second, because peace is the fruit of grace. There is no peace with God except through the grace that justifies (Romans 5:1–2), and no lasting peace of heart except from the same source (Philippians 4:7). Matthew Henry puts the order in four words: “No peace without grace” (Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, on Ephesians 1:2).

The greeting is not merely a wish. Apostolic greetings function as benedictions: Paul, as Christ’s envoy, pronounces grace and peace upon the church in the manner of Aaron placing God’s name upon Israel (Numbers 6:27). The readers are not told to achieve peace but to receive it.

The source is “from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” One preposition (apo) governs both names, so that Father and Son are named together as a single fountain of grace and peace. This is a quiet but powerful testimony to the deity of Christ: no Jew would place a creature beside God as the co-source of divine blessing, yet Paul does so routinely and without argument (Romans 1:7; 1 Corinthians 1:3; Galatians 1:3). Christ is “Lord,” kyrios, the title the Greek Old Testament uses for the covenant name of God (Isaiah 45:23 with Philippians 2:10–11). And God is “our Father,” a phrase that already anticipates the adoption of verse 5: grace and peace come from one who has made us his children, and from the Son through whom that adoption was secured (Galatians 4:4–6). Calvin, commenting on the same greeting in Romans, notes that Paul names the Son with the Father because “through him all God’s blessings come to us” (Calvin, Commentary on Romans, on 1:7).

Christologically, then, verse 2 is a compressed gospel. Christ is the source of peace because he is himself “our peace” (Ephesians 2:14), having reconciled Jew and Gentile to God in one body through the cross (Ephesians 2:16). The peace he bestows, he first made; the grace he gives, he first purchased. The greeting that opens the letter is the same grace and peace with which it closes (Ephesians 6:23–24), framing everything between as a word of blessing from the Father through the Son.

Application

If grace and peace are gifts that flow from the Father through the Son, then the first business of every day is to receive them, not to manufacture them. Many believers live as though peace must be earned by a quiet morning, a controlled schedule, or an untroubled conscience, and then wonder why it is so fragile. Paul’s order teaches us to begin with grace: to return, each morning and each failure, to the free favor of God in Christ (Lamentations 3:22–23), and to let peace follow from it. When anxiety rises, the remedy is not to try harder at being calm but to remember what God has freely given (Romans 8:32; Philippians 4:6–7).

The greeting also shapes how we speak to one another. Paul’s first words to the church are a blessing, not a complaint or a demand. A Christian household, congregation, or workplace in which the first words of the day are gracious and peace-making is a place where Christ’s benediction is audibly echoed (Colossians 4:6; 1 Peter 3:9). Ministers in particular should recover the pronouncement of grace and peace at the opening of worship as a genuine bestowal from God, not a liturgical nicety. And every believer can learn to be a peacemaker, carrying into conflict the peace he has first received (Matthew 5:9; Romans 12:18).

A warning against misapplication: “grace and peace” must not be treated as a pious formula that costs nothing, nor “grace” reduced to leniency that leaves sin untouched; the grace that brings peace is the grace that also trains us “to renounce ungodliness” (Titus 2:11–12). Neither may peace be sought apart from grace, as mere inner tranquility detached from reconciliation with God; a calm conscience without the cross is a false peace (Jeremiah 6:14).

Section 3 — Blessed Be the God Who Has Blessed Us in Christ (Ephesians 1:3)

Key Insight

With verse 3 Paul breaks into praise, and the praise will not stop for twelve verses. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” is the opening of a berakah, the Jewish form of blessing God for what he has done (Genesis 14:20; Psalm 41:13; 72:18–19). Paul and Peter use it elsewhere (2 Corinthians 1:3; 1 Peter 1:3), always filled with Christ. God is named not as “the God of Abraham” but as “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ”: the Father of the eternal Son, and, because the Son became man, also his God (John 20:17). Our access to the Father runs through that relationship. Three forms of one root carry the verse: God is eulogētos (blessed, worthy of all praise); he has blessed us (eulogēsas); with every blessing (eulogia). When we bless God we give him praise; when God blesses us he gives us benefits. We bless him because he has first blessed us, and the whole eulogy is the reflex of grace received.

The blessing is described with three stacked phrases. It is “every spiritual blessing”: not every conceivable gift, but every blessing that belongs to the Spirit and to the age of the Spirit, which the following verses unpack as election, adoption, redemption, forgiveness, revelation, inheritance, and sealing (vv. 4–6; Ephesians 1:7–14). Calvin, following Chrysostom, takes the word spiritual to convey “an implied contrast between the blessing of Moses and of Christ” (Calvin, Commentary on Ephesians, on 1:3). Under the old covenant God’s blessings were often earthly and visible (Deuteronomy 28:1–14); the new covenant’s blessings are greater and more secure, though no less real. The aorist “has blessed” marks a completed act: every blessing is already given, even if not yet fully experienced.

It is “in the heavenly places” (en tois epouraniois), a phrase found only in Ephesians (v. 3; Ephesians 1:20; 2:6; 3:10; 6:12). It names the unseen realm where Christ now sits at the Father’s right hand (Ephesians 1:20), where believers are already seated with him (Ephesians 2:6), where the church’s very existence instructs the angelic powers (Ephesians 3:10), and where the believer’s warfare is waged (Ephesians 6:12). Our blessings are stored, as William Hendriksen puts it, where our Savior is, and they are therefore as safe as he is.

And it is “in Christ.” This is the decisive phrase. The blessings are not distributed in the abstract but lodged in a person; they are ours because he is ours. Here the Abrahamic promise comes home: “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3), which Paul reads as fulfilled “in Christ Jesus” so that “the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles” (Galatians 3:14). The verse is Trinitarian in shape: the Father blesses, in the Son, with the blessings of the Spirit. And it is Christ-centered at its core, for the Father who is “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” is our Father only in him.

Application

The first response this verse asks of us is the one Paul models: praise. Paul writes from custody in Rome, with a trial before Nero pending, and his first instinct on taking up the pen is to bless God. That is the fruit of a mind that counts its blessings in Christ rather than in circumstances. Many Christians tally their blessings as the world does, by health, income, family, and comfort, and so find their gratitude rising and falling with their bank balance. Paul teaches us to count differently. Make a habit of naming, in prayer, the blessings that are yours in Christ, beginning with those listed here: chosen, adopted, redeemed, forgiven, sealed. A believer who does this daily will find that thanksgiving becomes a reflex rather than an effort (Psalm 103:1–5; Colossians 3:16–17).

Second, the verse calls us to heavenly-mindedness. If our blessings are “in the heavenly places,” then our hearts should be there too: “seek the things that are above, where Christ is” (Colossians 3:1–2). This is not escapism but orientation. The Christian whose treasure is where Christ is can hold earthly things loosely, give generously, and suffer loss without being undone (Matthew 6:19–21; Hebrews 10:34). Third, the verse shapes worship. Doctrine that does not issue in doxology has not been understood; Paul gives his deepest theology in the form of praise, and our churches and households should do the same.

A warning against misapplication: “spiritual blessing” does not mean that God is indifferent to bodily need, for the same letter commands provision for the poor and tells fathers to nourish their children (Ephesians 4:28; 6:4); but neither does it license a prosperity gospel that promises earthly wealth to the faithful. And “in the heavenly places” is not a summons to withdraw from earthly responsibility; the second half of Ephesians is entirely about walking well on earth.

Section 4 — Chosen in Him before the Foundation of the World (Ephesians 1:4)

Key Insight

Verse 4 explains verse 3. “Even as” (kathōs) grounds the blessing in its source: God has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing because he “chose us in him before the foundation of the world.” The verb is exelexato, aorist middle: he chose for himself, a choice that originates in God’s own will and terminates on his own possession. The same verb describes Israel’s election (“the LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession … not because you were more in number … but because the LORD loves you,” Deuteronomy 7:6–8) and Jesus’ choice of the Twelve (“You did not choose me, but I chose you,” John 15:16). The object is “us,” persons, not merely a plan or a category (Romans 8:29; 2 Timothy 2:19).

The choice was made “in him.” Paul means more by this than that Christ is the instrument by which the elect are later saved. Christ is himself the chosen One, the elect Servant in whom the Father delights (Isaiah 42:1; Luke 9:35; 1 Peter 2:4–6), and the Father’s choice of his people was never a choice of them apart from him. He chose them as those who would be united to his Son, represented by him, and blessed in him. Hence Calvin’s counsel that Christ is the mirror in which we contemplate our election: we do not peer into the hidden decree; we look at Christ, and those in him by faith may know themselves chosen from eternity. The time of the choice, “before the foundation of the world” (pro katabolēs kosmou), removes every possibility that the choice answered something in us; there was no “us” yet, no faith, no works, only the love between the Father and the Son before creation (John 17:24; Romans 9:11; 2 Timothy 1:9; 1 Peter 1:20).

Election has a purpose: “that we should be holy and blameless before him.” Hagious kai amōmous is the language of the sacrifice without blemish (Leviticus 1:3; 22:21 LXX), applied in the New Testament to Christ as the spotless Lamb (1 Peter 1:19) and to the church he will present “holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:27; Colossians 1:22). God did not choose us because we were holy, but so that we would become holy; holiness is the fruit of election, never its root. “Before him” (katenōpion autou) means in his sight, where every believer already stands in Christ and will finally stand without fault (Jude 24).

Finally, “In love.” The ESV prints the words at the end of verse 4 but attaches them to “he predestined” in verse 5; others attach them to “holy and blameless before him in love.” Either way, God’s eternal choice is the act of a loving Father, and the holiness it aims at is a life of love. Spurgeon said he believed the doctrine of election because he was certain that if God had not chosen him, he would never have chosen God.

Application

The doctrine of election, rightly received, produces three things in the believer: humility, assurance, and holiness. Humility, because if God chose me before the world existed, apart from anything in me, then there is nothing left to boast of (1 Corinthians 1:27–31; 4:7). The proud Christian has not understood verse 4. Assurance, because a salvation that began in God’s eternal will cannot be undone by my failures; “those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified” (Romans 8:30). The believer who looks to Christ and finds himself trusting him may know that he was chosen in him, and rest. Holiness, because the stated purpose of election is that we should be holy and blameless. Election is not a pillow for laziness but a spur to godliness: “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility” (Colossians 3:12). The one who knows he was chosen for holiness pursues it with the energy of gratitude rather than the anxiety of fear.

The doctrine also fuels evangelism rather than stifling it. Paul preached in Corinth because the Lord told him, “I have many in this city who are my people” (Acts 18:10), and he endured everything “for the sake of the elect” (2 Timothy 2:10). Because God has chosen a people, the gospel will not return empty, and the believer may labor with confidence rather than despair. Finally, the doctrine invites worship, which is where Paul places it: not in a debate but in a doxology.

A crucial warning against misapplication: election is not a doctrine to be used for speculating about who is or is not chosen, least of all oneself apart from Christ; we do not read the decree, we look to Christ, and whoever comes to him is received (John 6:37). It must never become an excuse for passivity in holiness or in evangelism, nor a weapon of pride against others, nor a cold abstraction detached from the “in love” that governs it. A doctrine Paul delivers in praise must not be handled in contention.

Section 5 — Predestined for Adoption to the Praise of His Glorious Grace (Ephesians 1:5–6)

Key Insight

“In love he predestined us.” Proorisas means to mark out a boundary in advance, to determine beforehand (Acts 4:28; Romans 8:29–30; 1 Corinthians 2:7). Having chosen a people, God also fixed their destination. The atmosphere of that decision is love. The ESV, with most modern editions, reads “In love he predestined,” and it matters: predestination is not a distant sovereign assigning fates but a Father determining beforehand to bring children home.

The destination is adoption: “for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ.” Huiothesia, found in the New Testament only in Paul (Romans 8:15, 23; 9:4; Galatians 4:5), was the Greco-Roman legal act by which a man took someone not his natural child and made him fully his son, with his name, his standing, and his inheritance. Paul makes this the goal of God’s eternal purpose. God did not merely predestine us to be pardoned, or even to be holy, but to be his children, taken “to himself” (eis auton), into his own family. J. I. Packer rightly calls adoption the highest privilege the gospel offers, higher even than justification, because the judge who acquits becomes the Father who embraces. Sinclair Ferguson observes that the whole Christian life is the life of a son who knows his Father. And it is “through Jesus Christ”: the Son by nature is the one through whom others become sons by grace (Galatians 4:4–6; Hebrews 2:10–13; John 1:12).

The ground of it all is “according to the purpose of his will” (kata tēn eudokian tou thelēmatos autou), literally “the good pleasure of his will.” Paul is answering the question “why?” and refusing every answer that lands in the creature. Why adoption? Why us? Because it pleased God (Matthew 11:26; Luke 12:32). The cause of salvation is God’s delight in being gracious.

Its end is “to the praise of his glorious grace.” This is the refrain that structures the eulogy (v. 6; Ephesians 1:12, 14), and it names the ultimate purpose of election, predestination, and adoption: not our happiness, though that follows, but the display and acclaim of the glory of God’s grace. As John Piper has insisted, God’s passion for his own glory is not vanity but the overflow of his goodness, for the grace that glorifies him is the grace that saves us. And the grace is concrete: “with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.” Echaritōsen means “graced,” lavished with favor, the verb used of Mary (Luke 1:28); and “the Beloved” (ho ēgapēmenos) is the Son on whom the Father’s voice fell at the Jordan and on the mountain (Matthew 3:17; 17:5; Isaiah 42:1; Colossians 1:13). Here is the Christological heart of the pericope. We are loved in the Beloved; our sonship is a share in his; our belovedness is derived from his. Calvin says that the name Beloved “is given, to remind us that by him the love of God is communicated to us” (Calvin, Commentary on Ephesians, on 1:6), and in the Institutes that “without Christ God is in a manner hostile to us” (Calvin, Institutes, 2.16.2); in the Beloved we find ourselves beloved.

Application

If God has predestined us for adoption, then the Christian life is to be lived as a son, not as a slave. Paul draws exactly this line: “you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Romans 8:15). Many believers pray like anxious employees, obey like servants afraid of dismissal, and suffer like orphans. Verse 5 says we were destined from eternity to be children, and our prayers, our obedience, and our suffering should bear that mark: confidence in prayer (Matthew 7:11; Hebrews 4:16), obedience that springs from love rather than fear (1 John 4:18; 5:3), and suffering that is received as a Father’s discipline rather than a judge’s sentence (Hebrews 12:5–11).

Adoption also remakes our relationships. Those adopted by the same Father are brothers and sisters, and the church is a household before it is an institution (Ephesians 2:19; Galatians 6:10). Family members bear with one another, provide for one another, and refuse to disown one another. And since everything ends “to the praise of his glorious grace,” adoption gives life a single aim. Work, marriage, parenting, suffering, and success are all to be turned toward the praise of the God who has graced us in the Beloved (1 Corinthians 10:31). The believer who knows himself loved in the Beloved will find that the praise of God’s grace is not a duty added to life but the natural music of it.

A warning against misapplication: adoption is not the universal fatherhood of God over all people irrespective of Christ; Scripture says the right to become God’s children is given to those who receive Christ (John 1:12), and that those outside him are “children of wrath” (Ephesians 2:3). “The purpose of his will” must not be twisted into fatalism that denies human responsibility, and “to the praise of his glorious grace” must not be heard as divine vanity; God’s glory and our good are not rivals, for the grace that glorifies him is the grace that saves us.

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Cross References

Comparative Gospel Study

Not Applicable as Direct Comparison — Ephesians is a New Testament epistle, not Gospel narrative. However, Ephesians 1:1–6 anticipates key Gospel themes:

• The Beloved Son. Paul’s “in the Beloved” (v. 6) gathers up the Father’s declaration at Jesus’ baptism and transfiguration, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17; 17:5; Mark 1:11; Luke 3:22). The Gospels show the Father’s love resting on the Son in history; Ephesians shows that same love resting on those united to him from eternity. The voice from heaven is the voice that now speaks over the church.
• The Father gives a people to the Son. Jesus speaks repeatedly of those “whom you have given me” (John 6:37, 39; 17:2, 6, 9, 24), loved by the Father “before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24). Ephesians 1:4 uses the identical phrase for the election of believers in Christ. What Jesus prayed in the upper room, Paul proclaims in the eulogy: the elect are the Father’s gift to the Son, chosen in him before time.
• “You did not choose me, but I chose you.” Jesus’ word to the disciples (John 15:16, 19) and his choice of the Twelve (Luke 6:13) dramatize in miniature the exelexato of verse 4. In both cases the initiative lies entirely with the Lord, the purpose is fruitfulness and holiness (“that you should go and bear fruit”), and the choice is made in love.
• Sonship and the Father’s good pleasure. Jesus teaches that the kingdom is the Father’s gift according to his good pleasure, “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32), and he thanks the Father that revelation comes to “little children” because “such was your gracious will” (Matthew 11:25–26). The same eudokia grounds adoption in verse 5. The Gospels’ “your Father” is the Father who predestined his people to be sons.
• Grace and peace from the Lord. The risen Jesus’ first word to his gathered disciples was “Peace be with you” (John 20:19, 21, 26; Luke 24:36), and John opens his Gospel with grace and truth coming through Jesus Christ (John 1:16–17). Paul’s greeting (v. 2) bestows on the church what the risen Lord bestowed in the upper room: peace that flows from grace, given by the Father through the Son.

Old Testament Connections

Pentateuch. The berakah form itself comes from Melchizedek’s “Blessed be God Most High” (Genesis 14:20) and runs through Israel’s worship. God’s promise to Abraham, “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:1–3), is the fountain of the “every spiritual blessing” that reaches the Gentiles in Christ (Galatians 3:14). Israel is called God’s “firstborn son” (Exodus 4:22), “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:5–6), and “a people holy to the LORD … chosen … not because you were more in number … but because the LORD loves you” (Deuteronomy 7:6–8; 14:2), texts that supply the vocabulary of saints, election, love, and sonship in verses 1, 4, and 5. The unblemished (amōmos) sacrifice (Leviticus 1:3; 22:21) and the command “You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy” (Leviticus 19:2) stand behind “holy and blameless before him” (v. 4). The Aaronic benediction (Numbers 6:24–26) is the model for Paul’s “grace to you and peace” (v. 2).

Historical Books. Solomon’s “Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, who with his hand has fulfilled what he promised” (1 Kings 8:15) and David’s “Blessed are you, O LORD, the God of Israel our father, forever and ever” (1 Chronicles 29:10–13) are berakoth of the kind Paul writes in verse 3. Samuel grounds Israel’s security in God’s free choice: “the LORD will not forsake his people, for his great name’s sake, because it has pleased the LORD to make you a people for himself” (1 Samuel 12:22), which is verse 5’s “good pleasure of his will” in Old Testament dress. The covenant with David, “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son” (2 Samuel 7:14), is the seed of adoption, fulfilled in the Son of David and extended to all who are in him (2 Corinthians 6:18).

Poetry and Wisdom. The Psalter closes each of its books with a berakah, “Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting” (Psalm 41:13; 72:18–19; 89:52; 106:48). “Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD, the people whom he has chosen as his heritage” (Psalm 33:12) and “Blessed is the one you choose and bring near, to dwell in your courts” (Psalm 65:4) join election to blessedness exactly as verses 3–4 do. Psalm 103 commands the soul to bless the LORD and forget not his benefits, the posture of verse 3. Psalm 2:7, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you,” is the messianic sonship in which believers share by adoption (Hebrews 1:5). Proverbs 8:22–31 speaks of wisdom with God “before the beginning of the earth,” the background for a purpose formed “before the foundation of the world.” Psalm 139:16 declares that all our days were written before one of them came to be.

Major Prophets. Isaiah’s Servant is “my chosen, in whom my soul delights” (Isaiah 42:1), the pattern for “the Beloved” (v. 6; Matthew 12:18). Isaiah 43:1–7 combines creation, redemption, election, and love (“you are precious in my eyes … and I love you”), and Isaiah 43:21 gives the purpose of election as praise: “the people whom I formed for myself that they might declare my praise,” the Old Testament root of “to the praise of his glorious grace.” Isaiah 63:16 and 64:8 address God as “our Father,” and Isaiah 48:11, “my glory I will not give to another,” explains why God’s own glory is the end of his grace. Jeremiah 1:5 (“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you”) and Jeremiah 31:3 (“I have loved you with an everlasting love”) illustrate election before birth and in love. Ezekiel 16:1–14 depicts God’s sovereign, loving choice of an unlovely people.

Minor Prophets. Hosea 11:1, “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son,” joins love, sonship, and calling, and is applied by Matthew to the true Son (Matthew 2:15). Hosea 1:10 promises that those called “not my people” will be called “children of the living God,” fulfilled in Gentile adoption (Romans 9:25–26). Malachi 1:2, “I have loved Jacob but Esau I have hated,” is Paul’s own proof text for unconditional election (Romans 9:13). Amos 3:2, “You only have I known of all the families of the earth,” shows that election is God’s knowing and loving choice, not mere foresight. Zephaniah 3:17 pictures the LORD rejoicing over his people with gladness and quieting them by his love, the Father’s delight that verse 5 calls “the good pleasure of his will.”

New Testament Fulfillment

Gospels/Acts. The Father’s voice naming Jesus “my beloved Son” (Matthew 3:17; 17:5; Mark 1:11; 9:7; Luke 3:22; 9:35) identifies “the Beloved” of verse 6. Jesus’ teaching on the Father’s gift of a people to the Son (John 6:37–44, 65; 10:27–29; 17:2, 6, 24), his “I chose you” (John 15:16), and his thanks for the Father’s “gracious will” (Matthew 11:25–27) are the Gospel roots of election and good pleasure. John 1:12–13 grounds the right to become children of God in the will of God, not of man. Acts records the Ephesian mission itself (Acts 18:19–21; 19:1–41; 20:17–38), Paul’s apostleship “by the will of God” in his conversion and commission (Acts 9:15; 26:16–18), the belief of “as many as were appointed to eternal life” (Acts 13:48), the Lord’s “many in this city who are my people” (Acts 18:10), and the church “obtained with his own blood” (Acts 20:28).

Paul’s Epistles. Romans 8:15–17 and Galatians 4:4–7 expound adoption, the Spirit of adoption, and the cry “Abba! Father!”; Romans 8:28–30 supplies the golden chain from foreknowledge and predestination to glorification; Romans 9:6–24 defends election “not because of works but because of him who calls.” Colossians, Ephesians’ companion letter, parallels nearly every phrase: “saints and faithful brothers in Christ” (Colossians 1:2), the Father “who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints” (Colossians 1:12), “the kingdom of his beloved Son” (Colossians 1:13), presentation “holy and blameless” (Colossians 1:22), and “God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved” (Colossians 3:12). Elsewhere: 2 Thessalonians 2:13 (“God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved”); 2 Timothy 1:9 (grace “given us in Christ Jesus before the ages began”); Titus 3:4–7 (saved “not because of works … so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs”); 1 Corinthians 1:26–31 (God chose the weak “so that no human being might boast”); and within Ephesians itself, the rest of the eulogy (Ephesians 1:7–14), the prayer (Ephesians 1:15–23), grace by faith (Ephesians 2:4–10), and the holy and blameless church (Ephesians 5:25–27).

General Epistles/Revelation. Peter opens with the same berakah, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” and the same logic of election and new birth (1 Peter 1:1–5), calls Christ the lamb “without blemish” foreknown “before the foundation of the world” (1 Peter 1:19–20), and names the church “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation” (1 Peter 2:9–10). John marvels at the love by which “we should be called children of God; and so we are,” and ties sonship to final purity (1 John 3:1–3). Hebrews shows the Son bringing “many sons to glory” and calling them brothers (Hebrews 2:10–13). Jude addresses believers as “called, beloved in God the Father and kept for Jesus Christ” and promises presentation “blameless before the presence of his glory” (Jude 1, 24). Revelation speaks of names written in the book of life “before the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8; 17:8), of a people ransomed “from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9–10), of the conqueror who will be God’s son (Revelation 21:7), and addresses the church in Ephesus directly (Revelation 2:1–7).

Redemptive-Historical Context

Ephesians 1:1–6 spans the whole arc of redemptive history in six verses, and it does so by beginning before the arc begins. Creation is named only to be preceded: God chose his people “before the foundation of the world” (v. 4). Before heaven and earth, before Adam, before sin, there was the eternal love of the Father for the Son (John 17:24) and, within that love, the Father’s purpose to have a people united to the Son, holy, blameless, and adopted. Reformed theology names this eternal counsel the covenant of redemption: the Father’s gift of a people to the Son, and the Son’s undertaking to redeem them (John 6:38–39; 17:2). Creation itself was the stage built for that purpose.

The Fall is not mentioned in the pericope but is presupposed by every word of it. One does not need grace unless one is ill-deserving; one does not need to be made holy and blameless unless one is unholy and guilty; one does not need adoption unless one is an orphan or a rebel. Paul will say it outright in the next chapter: the chosen were “dead in … trespasses and sins,” “children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Ephesians 2:1–3). The election of verse 4 is therefore an election of sinners, and the grace of verse 6 is grace to the undeserving. The old covenant history of Israel, chosen in love and yet faithless, displays both the pattern of election and the need for a better Son.

Redemption is where the eternal purpose becomes history. The Father’s choice “in him” required the Son to come, and he came as “the Beloved” (v. 6), the Servant in whom the Father delights (Isaiah 42:1), who lived the holy and blameless life the elect had not lived, and offered himself as the unblemished sacrifice (1 Peter 1:19) so that his people might be presented “holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:27). The pericope itself stops at the threshold of this accomplishment; the next movement of the eulogy says “in him we have redemption through his blood” (Ephesians 1:7). But everything in verses 3–6 leans toward the cross, for the “every spiritual blessing” of verse 3 was purchased there. The adoption predestined in eternity was secured when “God sent forth his Son … so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:4–5), and is applied when the Spirit of the Son cries “Abba! Father!” in the believer’s heart (Galatians 4:6; Romans 8:15).

Consummation is present in the refrain. “To the praise of his glorious grace” (v. 6) is where history is going; the same refrain closes the eulogy with the Spirit as “the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory” (Ephesians 1:14). Here is the already and the not yet. Already we are blessed, chosen, predestined, adopted, and graced; not yet do we stand “holy and blameless before him” in experience, nor has the full “adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:23) arrived. The believer lives between the aorist of verse 3 (“has blessed”) and the purpose of verse 4 (“that we should be”), between the decree and the glory. Israel’s story is not discarded but fulfilled: the titles of saints, chosen, and sons belong now to the one new humanity in Christ (Ephesians 2:15), and the new covenant promised through the prophets is the form the eternal purpose takes in history. Everything begins in the Father’s love, is accomplished in the Beloved, is applied by the Spirit, and ends in praise.

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Systematic Theology Connection

Election and Predestination

Ephesians 1:4–5 is the locus classicus of the Reformed doctrine of election, and the Westminster Confession’s definition is little more than a paraphrase of it: those predestined to life God, “before the foundation of the world was laid, according to his eternal and immutable purpose, and the secret counsel and good pleasure of his will, hath chosen, in Christ, unto everlasting glory, out of his mere free grace and love, without any foresight of faith, or good works, or perseverance in either of them … and all to the praise of his glorious grace” (WCF 3.5; cf. WLC 12–13; WSC 20). Every clause comes from this pericope. The passage teaches that election is eternal (“before the foundation of the world”), personal (“chose us”), in Christ (“in him”), unconditional (grounded in “the good pleasure of his will,” not in us), purposive (“that we should be holy and blameless”), loving (“in love he predestined”), and doxological (“to the praise of his glorious grace”). Predestination (proorisas) specifies the destination of the elect, adoption, and the golden chain of Romans 8:29–30 shows that none of the predestined is lost along the way.

Practically, the doctrine humbles, assures, and sanctifies. It humbles because nothing in us moved God to choose us (1 Corinthians 1:27–31; Romans 9:11, 16). It assures because a salvation rooted in God’s eternal will cannot be undone by our weakness (John 10:28–29; Romans 8:33). It sanctifies because the purpose of election is holiness, and those who know they are “God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved” are called to put on the character of Christ (Colossians 3:12). The Confession adds that the doctrine is to be “handled with special prudence and care,” so that believers may “from the certainty of their effectual vocation, be assured of their eternal election” (WCF 3.8): assurance comes not by probing the decree but by looking to Christ and finding oneself called. It is a comfort for believers, a motive for evangelism (Acts 18:10; 2 Timothy 2:10), and a doctrine to be preached, as here, in the key of praise (2 Thessalonians 2:13; 2 Timothy 1:9).

Adoption

Verse 5 names adoption as the goal of predestination, and the Westminster Standards give it a chapter of its own, a rarity among Reformed confessions. “All those that are justified, God vouchsafeth, in and for his only Son Jesus Christ, to make partakers of the grace of adoption: by which they are taken into the number, and enjoy the liberties and privileges of the children of God; have his name put upon them, receive the Spirit of adoption; have access to the throne of grace with boldness; are enabled to cry, Abba, Father; are pitied, protected, provided for, and chastened by him as by a father; yet never cast off, but sealed to the day of redemption, and inherit the promises, as heirs of everlasting salvation” (WCF 12; cf. WSC 34; WLC 74). The passage teaches that adoption is eternal in its origin (predestined), loving in its motive (“in love”), Christ-mediated in its accomplishment (“through Jesus Christ”), personal in its end (“to himself”), and gracious in its ground (“the good pleasure of his will”).

Adoption is distinct from justification, though never separated from it. Justification gives the standing of a righteous man before the judge; adoption gives the standing of a son before the Father (Galatians 4:4–7; Romans 8:15–17). J. I. Packer’s summary, that to be right with God the judge is a great thing but to be loved and cared for by God the Father is greater, captures the Confession’s ordering. Practically, adoption shapes prayer (we address God as Father, Matthew 6:9), obedience (sons obey from love, not slavish fear, 1 John 4:18), suffering (discipline is the Father’s, Hebrews 12:5–11), assurance (the Spirit bears witness that we are children, Romans 8:16), and hope (we await the redemption of our bodies and the inheritance, Romans 8:23; 1 Peter 1:4). It also constitutes the church as a family, so that believers are brothers and sisters under one Father (Ephesians 2:19; 1 John 3:1–2; Galatians 3:26).

Union with Christ

The phrase “in Christ” or its equivalents appears four times in six verses (v. 1, v. 3, v. 4, v. 6) and roughly a dozen times in the eulogy. Union with Christ is not one blessing among others but the matrix in which all the others are given: believers are saints in Christ, blessed in Christ, chosen in him, graced in the Beloved. The Larger Catechism defines this union as “the work of God’s grace, whereby they are spiritually and mystically, yet really and inseparably, joined to Christ as their head and husband; which is done in their effectual calling” (WLC 66), and explains that the communion in grace which believers enjoy is “their partaking of the virtue of his mediation, in their justification, adoption, sanctification, and whatever else, in this life, manifests their union with him” (WLC 69; cf. WCF 26.1). The passage shows this union stretching back into eternity: the elect were chosen in him before the world, so that union with Christ is decretal before it is actual, and actual in effectual calling and faith (Ephesians 2:5–6; 1 Corinthians 1:30).

John Murray held that union with Christ is the central truth of the whole doctrine of salvation, and this pericope bears him out. Christ is the head in whom the elect were chosen, the Beloved in whom they are loved, the Son through whom they are adopted, and the one in whom every spiritual blessing is stored. Practically, the doctrine teaches the believer to locate his identity, security, and holiness outside himself in Christ (Galatians 2:20; Colossians 3:3–4), to resist every attempt to seek blessing apart from him, and to look for assurance of election not by inspecting the decree but by asking whether he is in Christ by faith (2 Corinthians 13:5; John 15:4–5; Romans 8:1; Philippians 3:8–9).

The Sovereignty of God in His Eternal Decree

The pericope is saturated with the language of divine will: Paul is an apostle “by the will of God” (v. 1), believers are predestined “according to the purpose of his will” (v. 5), and the same note will sound again in “the mystery of his will” and “the counsel of his will” (Ephesians 1:9, 11). The Confession teaches that “God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass” (WCF 3.1; cf. WSC 7; WLC 12), and that this decree is the expression of God’s freedom and wisdom, not of caprice. The passage shows that decree in its most gracious aspect: the sovereign God has ordained the blessing, election, holiness, and adoption of a people, and has done so according to the eudokia of his will, his good pleasure, the delight he takes in being gracious (Matthew 11:26; Luke 12:32). Sovereignty and love are not in tension here; “in love he predestined.”

The passage also teaches that the decree is ordered to God’s glory: all is “to the praise of his glorious grace” (v. 6), which the Shorter Catechism echoes in defining the decrees as God’s eternal purpose “whereby, for his own glory, he hath foreordained whatsoever comes to pass” (WSC 7), and in making man’s chief end “to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever” (WSC 1). Practically, a God who is sovereign over salvation is a God who can be trusted with everything else (Romans 8:28, 32); his will is not a threat to be feared but a refuge to be sought. Prayer becomes confident, because the Father who willed our adoption hears our requests (Matthew 7:11); suffering becomes bearable, because it falls within the wise purpose of the one who chose us (Genesis 50:20; Ephesians 1:11); and worship becomes the fitting response to a will that is both almighty and kind (Psalm 115:3; 135:6; Isaiah 46:9–10; Daniel 4:35; Revelation 4:11).

Sanctification as the Purpose of Election

Verse 4 states the purpose of election in one clause: “that we should be holy and blameless before him.” The Standards define sanctification as “the work of God’s free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness” (WSC 35; cf. WCF 13.1–3; WLC 75), and the Confession explicitly ties it to the decree: those “effectually called, and regenerated … are further sanctified, really and personally, through the virtue of Christ’s death and resurrection” (WCF 13.1). The passage teaches that holiness is not the condition of election but its fruit and goal. God did not choose the holy; he chose sinners in order to make them holy, a holiness that is definitive in Christ (they are already “saints,” v. 1; 1 Corinthians 1:2, 30), progressive in this life (“more and more,” Philippians 1:6; 2 Corinthians 3:18), and perfect at the end, when Christ presents the church “holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:27; Jude 24; 1 Thessalonians 5:23–24).

Practically, this doctrine answers the oldest objection to election, that it breeds license. Paul’s own statement of election makes holiness its point, and he goes on to call the chosen to “walk in a manner worthy of the calling” (Ephesians 4:1), to “be imitators of God, as beloved children” (Ephesians 5:1), and to put on “the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:24). The believer pursues holiness not to secure election but because election secured holiness for him (Titus 2:14; 1 Peter 1:15–16; Hebrews 12:14). He pursues it “before him,” living in the sight of the Father who chose him, which is both the most searching and the most comforting place to live (Psalm 139:1–6, 23–24; Colossians 3:12; 1 John 3:2–3; Romans 8:29).

The Covenant of Grace and the Covenant of Redemption

Behind the eternal election of verse 4 lies an eternal agreement. The Father chose a people “in him,” before the world, to be adopted “through Jesus Christ,” and the Son speaks in the Gospels of those “whom you have given me” and of the work “you gave me to do” (John 17:2, 4, 6, 24; 6:38–39). Reformed theology calls this eternal counsel between Father and Son the covenant of redemption (pactum salutis), and the Larger Catechism folds it into its account of the covenant of grace: “The covenant of grace was made with Christ as the second Adam, and in him with all the elect as his seed” (WLC 31; cf. WCF 7.3; 8.1; WSC 20). The passage teaches that grace did not begin at the cross or at conversion but in eternity, in the Father’s love for the Son and his purpose to bless a people in him; “grace … which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began” (2 Timothy 1:9).

The pericope also displays the covenant of grace in its historical administration. Israel’s titles, saints (Exodus 19:6), chosen (Deuteronomy 7:6), son (Exodus 4:22), and beloved (Deuteronomy 7:8), now belong to Jews and Gentiles together in Christ, because the one covenant of grace, “differently administered in the time of the law, and in the time of the gospel,” is “one and the same, under various dispensations” (WCF 7.5–6). Christ is the covenant head and mediator in whom “all the promises of God find their Yes” (2 Corinthians 1:20; Hebrews 8:6), and the Abrahamic blessing comes to the nations in him (Genesis 12:3; Galatians 3:14, 29). Practically, the covenant framework assures believers that their salvation rests on a promise sealed between the Father and the Son before they were born, that the God who chose them has bound himself to them by oath (Hebrews 6:17–18), and that their children are included in the administration of the covenant and its promises (Acts 2:39; Ephesians 6:1–4; 1 Corinthians 7:14), which is why the church baptizes them and raises them as heirs of the covenant.

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Reformed Theology

Reformed theology reads Ephesians 1:1–6 as the charter of sovereign grace, and has done so since Calvin, whose commentary on the passage treats verse 4 as declaring “the foundation and first cause” of every benefit believers receive: God’s eternal election in Christ. For the Reformed tradition the passage situates salvation entirely within the covenant of grace, whose origin is the eternal counsel of the triune God. The Father chose a people in the Son before the world (v. 4), the Son undertook to redeem them (Ephesians 1:7), and the Spirit seals them for the inheritance (Ephesians 1:13–14). The Westminster Confession’s chapter on God’s decree (WCF 3) is built almost sentence by sentence from these verses, and its chapter on adoption (WCF 12) gives confessional standing to the goal Paul names in verse 5. The Canons of Dort likewise cite Ephesians 1:4 as proof that election is “the unchangeable purpose of God, whereby, before the foundation of the world, he hath out of mere grace … chosen, from the whole human race … a certain number of persons to redemption in Christ” (Canons of Dort, First Head, Article 7).

Several emphases mark the Reformed reading. First, election is in Christ, and Christ is the mirror of election. Calvin insisted that believers seek certainty of their election not in the secret decree but in Christ, in whom the Father has adopted us; Sinclair Ferguson and R. C. Sproul have carried the same pastoral emphasis into the present, Sproul arguing in Chosen by God that the doctrine is not a philosophical puzzle but the good news that salvation is of the Lord from first to last. Second, election is unto holiness. The Reformed have always answered the charge of antinomianism from verse 4: God chose us “that we should be holy,” so the elect are known by their pursuit of holiness, not by their claim to the decree. Third, adoption is the apex of grace. Geerhardus Vos observed that in Paul adoption is both an eschatological gift already received and a consummation still awaited (Romans 8:23); John Murray and Sinclair Ferguson have shown how the Father-child relationship shapes the whole Christian life; and the Westminster divines, alone among the major Reformed confessions, devoted a chapter to it.

The Reformed tradition also reads the passage redemptive-historically and typologically. Israel’s election, sonship, and holiness (Deuteronomy 7:6–8; Exodus 4:22; 19:6) are the Old Testament type; the church, Jew and Gentile in one body, is the antitype, not a replacement for Israel but its enlargement and fulfillment in Christ (Ephesians 2:11–22; Galatians 3:29). Meredith Kline and G. K. Beale have traced how the eternal covenant of redemption is administered through the covenants of history and consummated in the new creation, and D. A. Carson has stressed that Paul’s doctrine of election, delivered here as doxology, must be preached as Paul preached it: to produce praise, humility, and assurance, not speculation. Spurgeon, the Reformed tradition’s great preacher of election, loved this passage for exactly that reason; and John Piper has made “to the praise of his glorious grace” the center of his insistence that God’s pursuit of his own glory and his love for his people are one thing. Reformed theology thus hears in Ephesians 1:1–6 what Paul wrote it to produce: the blessing of the God who has blessed us in the Beloved, before the world, for holiness, for adoption, and for praise.

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Dispensational Theology

Dispensational interpreters hold Ephesians in especially high regard, and for a specific reason: it is the letter of the church as the body of Christ, the “mystery” hidden in past ages and revealed to the apostles (Ephesians 3:3–6). The Scofield Reference Bible treats Ephesians as the premier epistle of “the church which is his body,” and classic dispensationalists such as Lewis Sperry Chafer, Charles Ryrie, and John Walvoord read 1:1–6 as describing the distinctive heavenly calling of that body. The phrase “every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (v. 3) is central to this reading. Chafer and Scofield contrasted the church’s blessings, which are spiritual, heavenly, and already possessed in Christ, with Israel’s covenant blessings, which were earthly, national, and territorial (Deuteronomy 28:1–14; Genesis 15:18–21). For dispensationalism the distinction is not a matter of degree but of kind: Israel is God’s earthly people with an earthly future in the millennial kingdom, and the church is God’s heavenly people whose destiny is with Christ in the heavenlies. Ephesians 1:3 is thus read as a programmatic statement of the church’s unique position, not as the fulfillment of Israel’s blessings transferred to a new people.

On election and predestination themselves, traditional dispensationalists have been broadly Calvinistic, though with reservations. Chafer’s Systematic Theology affirms unconditional election and predestination from these verses, and Ryrie and Walvoord accept that God chose believers “before the foundation of the world” on the basis of his sovereign will. Harold Hoehner’s exhaustive Dallas Seminary commentary on Ephesians argues carefully that exelexato denotes God’s sovereign choice of individuals, that “in love” belongs with “he predestined,” and that adoption is the goal of predestination. At the same time, many dispensational writers have been uneasy with the fuller Reformed system, frequently rejecting particular redemption and sometimes preferring to describe election as corporate (the choice of the church “in Christ” as a body) or as grounded in foreknowledge, so that the literal-grammatical hermeneutic is applied to the words of verse 4 while the systematic conclusions drawn from them vary from writer to writer.

The literal-grammatical hermeneutic also shapes the reading of “saints” (v. 1) and “adoption” (v. 5). Dispensationalists insist that Paul is addressing church-age believers, not Israel, and that the adoption of verse 5 is the church’s particular privilege as sons placed in Christ; Israel’s “adoption” (Romans 9:4) remains a national, covenantal status whose promises will be fulfilled literally to national Israel in the future (Romans 11:25–29). Progressive dispensationalists such as Craig Blaising and Darrell Bock soften the earthly/heavenly dualism, allowing that the church already participates in the inaugurated blessings of the new covenant and the Davidic kingdom, while still maintaining a future for national Israel. Dwight Pentecost placed the church’s heavenly position alongside Israel’s earthly kingdom hope within his larger prophetic scheme, and Walvoord read “to the praise of his glorious grace” as pointing to the church’s future display of that grace in the ages to come (Ephesians 2:7). Reformed readers will agree with dispensationalists that the passage teaches sovereign election, Christ-centered blessing, and adoption as sons, and will differ chiefly over whether Israel’s covenant titles are here fulfilled in one people of God or reserved for a separate earthly people.

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Bibliography

Commentaries on Ephesians

• Calvin, John. Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul to the Galatians and Ephesians. Translated by William Pringle. Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1854.
• Henry, Matthew. Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible. Vol. 6. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1991.
• Poole, Matthew. A Commentary on the Holy Bible. Vol. 3. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1963.
• Hendriksen, William. Exposition of Ephesians. New Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1967.
• Bruce, F. F. The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the Ephesians. NICNT. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984.
• Lincoln, Andrew T. Ephesians. Word Biblical Commentary 42. Dallas: Word, 1990.
• O’Brien, Peter T. The Letter to the Ephesians. Pillar New Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999.
• Hoehner, Harold W. Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002.
• Thielman, Frank. Ephesians. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010.
• Stott, John R. W. The Message of Ephesians. The Bible Speaks Today. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1979.
• Ferguson, Sinclair B. Let’s Study Ephesians. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2005.
• Lloyd-Jones, D. Martyn. God’s Ultimate Purpose: An Exposition of Ephesians 1. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1978.

Theological and Pastoral Works

• Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Edited by John T. McNeill. Translated by Ford Lewis Battles. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960 (esp. 3.21–24).
• Sproul, R. C. Chosen by God. Wheaton, IL: Tyndale, 1986.
• Packer, J. I. Knowing God. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1973.
• Ferguson, Sinclair B. Children of the Living God. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1989.
• Ferguson, Sinclair B. The Christian Life: A Doctrinal Introduction. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1981.
• Murray, John. Redemption Accomplished and Applied. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1955.
• Vos, Geerhardus. The Pauline Eschatology. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1930.
• Vos, Geerhardus. Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948.
• Kline, Meredith G. Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview. Overland Park, KS: Two Age Press, 2000.
• Beale, G. K. A New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011.
• Carson, D. A. Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility: Biblical Perspectives in Tension. Atlanta: John Knox, 1981.
• Piper, John. The Pleasures of God: Meditations on God’s Delight in Being God. Portland: Multnomah, 1991.
• Spurgeon, C. H. “Election” (Sermon No. 41, 1855), The New Park Street Pulpit, and “Adoption” (Sermon No. 360, 1861), The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit. London: Passmore & Alabaster.
• Bavinck, Herman. Reformed Dogmatics. Vol. 2, God and Creation. Edited by John Bolt. Translated by John Vriend. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004.
• Warfield, B. B. The Plan of Salvation. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1935.
• Burke, Trevor J. Adopted into God’s Family: Exploring a Pauline Metaphor. New Studies in Biblical Theology 22. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006.
• Metzger, Bruce M. A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament. 2nd ed. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994 (on Ephesians 1:1).

Confessional Standards

• The Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), especially chapters 3, 7, 8, 12, 13, 18, and 26.
• The Westminster Larger Catechism (1648), especially Questions 12–13, 31, 66, 69, 74–75.
• The Westminster Shorter Catechism (1647), especially Questions 1, 7, 20, 34–35.
• The Canons of Dort (1619), First Head of Doctrine.

Dispensational Works

• Scofield, C. I., ed. The Scofield Reference Bible. New York: Oxford University Press, 1909; rev. ed. 1917.
• Chafer, Lewis Sperry. Systematic Theology. 8 vols. Dallas: Dallas Seminary Press, 1947–48.
• Ryrie, Charles C. Dispensationalism. Rev. ed. Chicago: Moody, 1995.
• Ryrie, Charles C. Basic Theology. Chicago: Moody, 1986.
• Walvoord, John F. The Millennial Kingdom. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1959.
• Pentecost, J. Dwight. Things to Come: A Study in Biblical Eschatology. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1958.
• Blaising, Craig A., and Darrell L. Bock. Progressive Dispensationalism. Wheaton, IL: Victor, 1993.
• Hoehner, Harold W. Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary (listed above; Dallas Theological Seminary).

Bible Translation

• The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2001, 2016.